NationStates Jolt Archive

First of all, I'm an American. Second, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not much of a soccer fan. I know who David Beckham and Pele are, and I root for the old US of A during the World Cup just out of national pride, and I did play soccer at a very young age, but other than that, the whole European Soccer Leagues and teams confuse me.

I know there are a variety of leagues, and different people sometimes play for different teams, but how are these leagues structured? What are "club teams" as opposed to pro teams? What are Championship Leagues compared to like Italian Leagues? Why do some teams like Arsenal have a team name while teams like Barcelona have a city name, and then other teams like Manchester United have both?

I'm a sports fanatic, so while I may not like the sport all that much, I still feel stupid not knowing much about how it works. MLS is rather pathetic here in America, so I figured that if I were going to talk to anyone about soccer I'd be better off going with the European version.

I know I've said some stupid things in this thread probably, but I really just want to understand how all this stuff works. Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to inform me.

Was it the American women's football team that went topless once?

Whoever it was, that's the only time I ever thought football was half decent.

So sayeth the unhelpful European.

It's simple really, Soccer = Confusing.

Also, it is at its best when played at a peewee level, cause the refs don't notice as much of the crazy fun violence!

OK. What exactly is it that you don't understand?

I will start with the basics.

Each nation has its own football association and these organize league competitions. In general there are three or four levels of league in any nation, with the best clubs in the top league and with clubs being demoted (relegated) if they do badly in the top league, and promoted if they do very well in one of the lower leagues.

The top leagues are the ones that you will have heard about through the international sports news services. In England it is called the Premiership, in Spain it is caled La Liga, in Italy it is Serie A, in Germany the Bundersliga, France is Ligue 1 and Holland has the Eredivisie. There are more leagues in Belgium, Norway, Greece, Scotland, Luxembourg etc.

Let us look at the Premiership in England. This has 20 clubs that each play each other twice. Once at home and once away. So there are 38 games in the season for each club. Points are won for winning or drawing games. The team gets 3 points for each win and 1 point for each draw. After all 20 clubs have played each of their 38 games their final positions are determined by the number of popints they have gained.

The season has just finished and the final table looks like this:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v722/Alienborn/prem2006.jpg

Chelsea won the league getting a total of 91 out of a maximum of 114 points. At home they played 19 - won 18, drew 1 lost 0, scored 47 goals and conceded 9. Away from home they played 19 - won 11, drew 3, lost 5 scored 25 and conceded 13 goals. This gave the an overall goal difference of +50 (they scored 50 goals more than they conceded).
If two teams finish level on points then the goal difference is used to decide between them (the higher the better).

What is significant at the end of the season, aside from who are the national champions (Chelsea for the second year in a row), is which teams have qualified for what Europe wide competitions, and which teams have been relegated to the next division down.

Now, for England, the top four teams qualify for the UEFA champions League competition for the following year. This is important as the clubs earn a lot of money from thes European games (TV rights revenue); so next year the UCL will have Chelsea, Man United, Liverpool and Arsenal from England. The next two clubs qualify directly for the UEFA cup - Tottenham and Blackburn this time, and finally Newcastle get to play a pre season competition called the Inter toto cup, the winner of which also goes into the UEFA cup.

The bottom three clubs will not be in the Premiership next season. They will play in the next league down - called for some unknown reason, the Championship. Their places are to be taken by the top two clubs in this yeares championship, plus a third that won a play off between the clubs that fineshed third through sixth. So goodbye to Birmingham, West Bromwich and Sunderland and say hello to Reading (pronounced like Otis Redding and nothing to do with books), Sheffield United and Watford.

I hope this has helped.

Names.

Names have to be disambiguating, and that is all. Manchester United are Man U to distinguish them from Manchester City (another professional club). Barcelona can be simply Barcelona as the other club in the city calls itself Espanyol (no confusion there). The London teams are named after regions or features of their region. Hence Arsenal - named after the Arsenal in Highbury where they are based.

Some few teams are based around a company or service and their names reflect this. Hence Lokomotive Moscow (a railway team), or Bayer Leverkusen (The Bayer pharmaceutical company)

What do you mean by 'club' and pro teams? Can you give me examples?

I know I've said some stupid things in this thread probably, but I really just want to understand how all this stuff works. Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to inform me.


Errr, I think it goes like this:

Really really rich people own teams. They hire people to kick a ball around the field, and offer them vast sums of money should they prove preficient at it.

So these people kick this ball around the field for a bit each week, and people pay perfectly good money to watch them do so. These people also show their alleigance to their local ball-kickers by wearing nifty colour-coordinated clothing and (sometimes) odd hats.

This fact explains why the people who pay silly sums of money to witness the ball-kicking are mostly male. Have you ever seen how women react if another woman shows up at the party wearing the same dress? Picture their heads exploding should they find themselves surrounded by 50,000 women wearing the same outfit!

Meanwhile, the ball-kickers organize themselves into groups of teams, and kick the balls at each other until one team proves their superiority at this pastime for the year.

They are called "champions", and get included into a larger ball-kicking competition until eventuall they might get crowned as the best ball-kickers in Europe for the year. And people shout out their amazement at their abilities, and shower them with endorsement contracts.

Indeed, the skill of these fine men at perfecting this childrens game somehow gets them placed in the realm of "heros" over and above all those people with REAL skills that actually benefit society such as doctors, firemen, and police officers.




Frankly, this generalization really applies to ALL professional sports, and whatever your preference in such endeavours - I think we all agree that it would be much much more worthwhile if they kicked lawyers and politicians instead of balls.

But there it is.

Players and teams.

There is no limit to the number of players that can be under contract to any team, except the wealth of the team of course. There is no salary cap, and no draft system.

Professional teams scout players at school and often sign exceptional prospects to contracts when they are still in their early teens (13 or so). Each top club will also have a youth team, and a development team etc. (Equivalent of minor league clubs in Baseball - more or less)

Now a player has whatever contract they can negotiate but another club can come along and offer to buy that player out of their existing contract and contract the player themselves. This is called a transfer. There are strict rules concerning how approaches can be made, and when such transfers can take place. Contracts are similar to those in US sports in that they are for fixed time perods. Three years, seven years etc, Thierry Henry has just signed a new four year contract with Arsenal after the club turned down offers of 50 million pounds for him. . Michael Balack has just transferred from Bayern Munich to Chelsea (I don't know how much this cost Chelsea, but they had to pay)

Money rules in this part of the game. Hence the very top clubs tend to stay the same as they are the ones with the fan base and the income. (The two are strongly linked as a large part of a clubs income comes from merchandise sales. )

As far as I understand, the American leagues are run as franchises aren't they? That is a major difference, in England all football clubs are their own company. This explains why they have very different names - you can name them what you like. It is theoretically possible to get 15 players together and take them from non league (Which tends to be amature) up to the Unibond league (Which is, I believe, the top non league league) (Often Semi-pro) and up into the main football league (Professional) and even up to the Premiership. Recently when Manchester United were taken over by Malcolm Glazier, a group of fans split off and formed FC United and are trying to do just this.

As for the Champion's "league" That is a misnomener. It is a cup competition with a similar knock out system to the world cup, rather than a league.

The conference is actually the top of the "non-league" competitions. The unibond league is the northern feeder league into the conference. The conference is just another set of leagues, with conference north and conference south playing temas against each other geographically, and clubs promoted to and relegated from the conference national. Above the conference is the "football league", which consists of 3 tiered leagues: league two, league one, and the (coca-cola) championship.

Michael Balack has just transferred from Bayern Munich to Chelsea (I don't know how much this cost Chelsea, but they had to pay)

To be awkward, I think Ballack moved on a bosman. (His contract had run out, so he moved as a free agent). But I'm probably remembering wrongly as per usual.

To be awkward, I think Ballack moved on a bosman. (His contract had run out, so he moved as a free agent). But I'm probably remembering wrongly as per usual.


He did indeed, however he is costing Chelsea £130,000 a week as well as probably a massive signing on fee and a shed load of agents fees...

To be awkward, I think Ballack moved on a bosman. (His contract had run out, so he moved as a free agent). But I'm probably remembering wrongly as per usual.
I'd bet that they have to pay him, if not Bayern (I believe there is some bad blood there now).

I'd bet that they have to pay him, if not Bayern (I believe there is some bad blood there now).

Yeah, they have to pay him, but not a penny goes to Bayern...kinda sucks for them...and I bet Bayer Leverkusen had some kinda deal where they would recieve a percentage of any future sale in his contract.

Oh, the Champions League (which is really a knock-out competition like the English FA Cup) is different that many nations participate. Each European nation has particular quote to fill towards the CL, different depending on the league positions in each nation. You'll find England, France, Spain, Italy and Germany get the biggest headlines while teams from Greece, Turkey, Russia, etc don't tend to win the UEFA or Champions League due to their nations small national leagues.

And Watford just got 44 million Pounds for going up.:eek:

It's simple:

The Team that pays much the (Referee? Arbitrator? Don't know how is called in english) wins..

:-)

It's simple:

The Team that pays much the (Referee? Arbitrator? Don't know how is called in english) wins..

:-)


BTW: Cornelius cum alias nova?

And Watford just got 44 million Pounds for going up.:eek:
Well, not really. They will get around that much from increased gate receipts, increased tv money and increased prize money.

BTW: Cornelius cum alias nova?

...:confused:

what? i don't speak latin (ancient rome?)...
Forum Cornelii is the old name of my city... :cool:

Ciao!

Oh, the Champions League (which is really a knock-out competition like the English FA Cup) is different that many nations participate. Each European nation has particular quote to fill towards the CL, different depending on the league positions in each nation. You'll find England, France, Spain, Italy and Germany get the biggest headlines while teams from Greece, Turkey, Russia, etc don't tend to win the UEFA or Champions League due to their nations small national leagues.
Yeah, the qualification spots for European competitions are based on the UEFA coefficients (only time the word efficient is used in association with a football organisation).

The top leagues (England, Italy, Spain) get 4 Champions' League places, 3 UEFA Cup spots, and one Intertoto place. The next tier of leagues (I'm not sure who these are, but possibly Germany, Portugal, France), get 3 in the CL, not sure about the other competitions.

The four CL places for the top leagues are split up as two teams that skip the qualifying rounds, and two teams who have to play the third (and last) qualifying round.

The first qualifying round have national champions from countries with a low UEFA coefficient - Wales, Armenia, Lithuania, etc. The second round has lower placed teams from countries with high UEFA coefficients and the champions of countries with medium UEFA coefficients. The final round has the rest that don't skip qualifiying.

In the Champions' League proper, there are 32 teams to start off with, split into 8 groups of 4. This works much like the World Cup, but in the group stage the teams play each other home and away, so each team will play 6 games in the group. The top two qualify for the next round, and the competition is a knock-out over two legs (home and away) until the final, which is a one-off match. This year it was Barcelona v Arsenal, which Barcelona won 2-1.

How are world cup teams chosen?

Save time. Watch Hockey.

And Harlesburg, I like the Ducks, but the Oilers are going to destroy them. No one gets out of Rexall Place with wins. Besides, Oil is the duck's natural predator. Like in those environmental films about sunken fuel tankers.

How are world cup teams chosen?

Do you mean which teams get to go, or which players are included in the teams?

The latter is a matter of selection, from amongst those players that are eligible to play for the country acording to FIFA rules, of a squad of 23 players. This selection is normally made by the national team manager/coach.

If it is a matter of which teams get to play in the world cup then this depends upon regional qualifying tournaments, or on being the host nation. See this site for details (http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/06/en/)

Save time. Watch Hockey.

And Harlesburg, I like the Ducks, but the Oilers are going to destroy them. No one gets out of Rexall Place with wins. Besides, Oil is the duck's natural predator. Like in those environmental films about sunken fuel tankers.
Hockey takes longer. Went to one match, sat there for hours being completely bored with air horns going off in my ear every couple of minutes. Never again.

Hockey takes longer. Went to one match, sat there for hours being completely bored with air horns going off in my ear every couple of minutes. Never again.

Like any North American sport, the game takes four times longer to complete than the playing time. Let us all kneel and pray to TV advertising.